


Signs and Portents

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, precious alien worm babies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat thought he knew what he was getting into, when he agreed to help Kanaya and Jade resurrect the troll race.  He didn't count on the resurrected troll race including a handful of bright red grubs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the kinkmeme (http://homesmut.livejournal.com/17313.html?page=23#comments), and headed way over the expected word count.

Your phone buzzes at four o'clock in the afternoon, right in the middle of yet another thrilling installment of In Which A Rancid Waste of Hemoglobin Has Daymares About Being Ritually Shamed By A Barkbeast In Sunglasses, Featuring Four Stabbings, Traditional Slave Scarification, And Two Instances Of Traumatic Forced Horn Carving. 

You startle awake, and thrash senselessly against the tentacles that you imagine to be holding you in your recuperation. Sopor beneath your toes, presses up against your ribcage, and for a moment you are certain that this time Noir means to drown you. That this is troll blood, sour with age, and that you're finally going to get what you deserve, which is to choke on it till your breathbladders burst. 

Then you hit your head and come to your senses.

The sky burns bright and heavy around the edges of your blackout curtains. It's the middle of the day. You are probably crying because looking at the sunshine hurts. You are definitely not crying because something has stirred the heavy sediment of trauma settled at the bottom of your subconscious. You wipe your lacrymal ducts with the back of your arm and then remember, oh yeah, your arm is still covered in fucking slime, good job with the toxic facial, genius. You don’t know why you bother with this useless gunk anymore. It hasn’t worked properly for sweeps. 

And your phone is still buzzing.

You reach over the edge of the recuperacoon to pick it up, and see Kanaya's symbol flashing on the tactile interaction screen. Her text window flicks open with a swipe of your thumb. 

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began texting carcinoGeneticist [CG]

GA: Five Minutes

CG: NOT THAT I DON'T APPRECIATE YOU SENDING ME CRYPTIC TEXT MESSAGES IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SLEEP CYCLE  
CG: BUT I ACTUALLY DON'T  
CG: APPRECIATE IT, I MEAN  
CG: IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING

GA: The Hour Has Taken Its Toll On The Quality Of Your invective  
GA: Dare I Hope That I Will Escape This Conversation Without Being Given Reason To Contemplate Horrifying New Uses For My Bilesack  
GA: I Cannot Classify This Strange New Feeling In My Upper Thoracic Ridge

CG: YOUR STRANGE NEW FEELING IS CALLED SHUT UP

GA: Would You Truly Rather Be Asleep

CG: …  
CG: YOU KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT

GA: I Have To Go  
GA: We Need Your Assistance Right Away  
GA: Five Minutes  
GA: You Will Comb Your Hair I Hope

CG: WHAT'S UP, ANYWAY?

GA: I Do Not Have Time To Explain At Length  
GA: In A Word  
GA: !

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] ceased texting carcinoGeneticist [CG]

Well, fuck. 

You groan, and haul yourself up. 

Four minutes and fifty-five seconds later, you've towelled yourself off, scrubbed away your slugbreath, and jammed on a pair of faded old jeans. You can't find a clean shirt, and your hair is a sticky plaguebeast nest, but Jade Harley waits for no man -- at least, not ones named Karkat Vantas -- and so Kanaya is going to have to forget about combed hair and be happy with the fact that you have accomplished pants.

Your five minutes are up.

Green energy crackles around you, and without further ado, the Witch of Space teleports you out your comfortable respiteblock and into the muggy chill of the brooding cavern controlblock. 

"You look like shit!" Jade greets you, and throws you one of her old lab coats, grown soft and threadbare with use. You shrug it on and try not to think about how it smells like her.

Like most of the times in your life when you've tried to get over things that smarter people would have dropped sweeps ago, it doesn't work. 

"Fuck you too. You just assumed I wasn't going to have enough of my shit together to put on a shirt?"

"Pretty much!!"

You mull that over, and decide that you are still too drowsy to be an asshole right now. This is far from the first time that Jade and Kanaya have called you in to consult on Project The Egg Pile Doesn't Stop From Getting Taller at odd hours. You know that Jade knows exactly how much your shit stinks. 

"Ugh, fine, I guess that's fair," you grumble. "So what's the problem. Tell me you haven't found another weird blotchy egg, I told you those mean birthmarks, not tumors."

"Nope." Jade's grin threatens to split her muzzle, because she is a terrible day person who has been sent to destroy your life with her stupid giant teeth and positive attitude. "Try again."

You follow her gaze to the bank of monitors that show surveillance footage of the eggs at all times. Gods don't worry about predators, but they do worry about grubs hatching prematurely, or alone, so Jade installed cameras. The three of are working hard to do this thing right. All of the wigglers born from this clutch should be healthy and genetically viable, so that the brood won't even need to be thinned by trials. The humans are incredibly touchy about the idea of letting infants be culled after they've already hatched. 

Onscreen, Kanaya balances a basket atop her head and inches carefully towards a writhing knot of… something. It looks like a pile of rocks, dull rust to match the cavern walls, but it would make no fucking sense for rocks to move like that, and here and there, the swarm is interrupted by specks of shocking red.

"Holy fuck," you choke, while the bottom drops out of your stomach. 

You'd been so hopeful that they would all be normal. 

"Congratulations, 'Dad'." Jade squeezes your shoulder. "We did it. The first warmbloods are hatching."

~~~

The pair of you walk down to the caverns the old-fashioned way, because Jade doesn't want to spook the grubs by appearifying right of top of them. Or at least that's what she tells you. Those ears of hers don't miss a lot, and by this point in your life, you are resigned to every woman you know being able to read you like the nutrition label on a snack containment wrapper. Jade's probably trying to be kind and let you pull yourself together. 

Too bad for Jade that you're a cowardly sack of shit who'd rather wire his wordflap shut than confront his problems like a grown troll! Ha, that sure will show her.

Jade lets you get away with being stubborn it until you've almost reached the bottom of the stairs. 

"If you keep grimacing like that, you'll probably give the grubs some kind of phobia." She wags a finger in your face. "How will your kids be able live with themselves if they can't stand to see a big frowny doofus when they look in the mirror?" 

Jade pokes you right in the forehead, then, because she is incapable of being cute without also being completely infuriating. 

"How's this?" You use your index fingers to lift the corners of your lips into a fake grimace.

Jade plants her hands on her hips.

"I said to be less traumatic, not more!"

"Your dog breath is traumatic," you say. Jade's ears flatten, and suddenly it seems like a good idea to change the subject. "Anyway, those grubs are nothing special to do with me. They're not _my_ wigglers. That idea is so culturally inappropriate that I can't express how absurd it is without resorting to syllables outside the comprehension range of your fluffy mammalian hear triangles. Once the grubs finish their pupation, John and Aradia will herd group of lusii over here and--"

A shrill whistle rings out from within the cave structure. It takes you a second to realize that the whistle is Kanaya. You didn’t know she could do that. 

"Pardon my interruption," Kanaya shouts, "but would you two be interested in helping me collect these grubs, before they decide to make their home here and I am forced to construct a schoolfeeding facility?” She laughs. “There’s nothing to be shy about. I can’t believe you’re letting yourself miss this.” 

Jade sticks her tongue out at you. You make a gesture that Dave taught you, which you are told resembles a rigid human bulge. 

“Basket?” You hold out your hands. 

“Here.” Jade passes you one of the plastic soiled laundry collection receptacles that you had stockpiled by the cavern entrance for just this occasion. “Which type do you want to start with? Kanaya called the ones with snaggletooth horns.” 

You choose not to answer Jade’s question until you reach ground zero of the dawning grubpocalypse. The outer chambers of the birthing caverns are still dank and quiet, coated with thick layers of phosphorescent highblood eggs. It’s only once you reach the very lowest and warmest of passages that the rich, heady scent of spent yolk hits you, and soft bits of shell start getting caught beneath your sneakers. 

Most of the grubs have left the walls to crowd around the soft, glowing light that is Kanaya, and by this point she’s hip-deep in chirruping wigglers trying to climb Mount Chainsaw Murder. 

“Need a little help?” Jade asks, and heads into the fray without waiting for an answer, plucking a grub off of the floor and placing it in her basket. “I’ll grab the rust cuties with the really thick horns. There’s not many of the bright ones so they shouldn’t have to go by horn type. Karkat can take all—“

You clear your throat. “So help me, Harley, if you so much as pass gas in a way that sounds like the phrase ‘his kids’, I will spend the next five sweeps with Jake English searching for the ass-end of the world, just so I can throw your sorry carcass into its putrid shit-heaped depths.”

The freakblood grubs are… bright. And… crawling. They’re bright and crawling. When your eyes track them, you feel short of breath. 

Part of you – a big part, if you’re honest with yourself, and hell if you miss a chance to let that asshole have it – is incredibly uneasy about all this. Most adult trolls are not supposed to get anywhere near their infant offspring. Just the sound of their soft, fragile bodies brushing together calls up sense memories that make you feel clumsy and helpless, vulnerable and repulsed. But you can’t leave Kanaya and Jade alone to handle a job that would ordinarily have taken a whole team of jadeblood attendants. You have been in this together from the start.

“Okay??” Jade huffs. “Geeze, what is even your problem. Stop raining on Kanaya’s parade.” 

Hunh. Kanaya does look happy, now that you think to look her in the face. Her movements are light, and careful, and the edges of her eyes are crinkled up in the kind of not-smile you usually see on Rose Lalonde. 

“I don’t have a problem,” you say. You take a deep breath, steeling yourself t maybe kind of touch a grub. Fuck, you should have brought gloves. “I just—“

You catch a droplet of bright red out of the corner of your eye. There’s a squeak, and a rustle of legs. One of the rustblooded grubs has taken an experimental nibble on its neighbor, and even now, after all this time, the sight of red blood on the ground is wrong, wrong, wrong. You’re back in your dream, small and helpless on the chopping block, watching you secrets smear across that damn dog’s sword. 

Without thinking, you drop your basket, dive towards the knot of squalling grubs, snatch up the little freakblood, and clutch it against your chest.

It’s okay. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay. The grub only has a tiny scratch, and that scratch is pressed tight against your shirt. No one can see. 

“I’ll … take care of these ones.”

You ignore Jade and Kanaya’s sniggering, and get to work. 

~~~

You remember grub-wrangling being a whole lot easier

Which is to say, you barely remember the first time you dealt with grubs at all

You’d managed to stay awake for two whole weeks, at that point, and you hadn’t been about to ruin a good thing just because Gamzee and Jack wanted to get some shut-eye. So you’d let them hole up in one of those hideous tents while you went for a walk to strategically survey the terrain. It had been nice to take a break from the smell of greasepaint and body odor. It had been less nice to be attacked by a herd of magnetic imps spoiling for a fight. 

Long story short: you decimated those little shits like an automated grain sorter of bladed destruction. You decimated them so hard that the correct meaning of the word ‘decimation’ had to be applied, and the remaining nine tenths of the horde chased you onto a rusty old transportalizer.

That was when shit got weird. 

You were bleeding from three fresh new stab wounds and also trapped on an asteroid for some reason? And the asteroid was full of bullshit computer consoles?? You pressed a few buttons on the off chance that they might send you back to LoTaM.

Instead the computers showed you pictures of your friends, and fuck it, so long as you were doomed to die slowly on a barren asteroid, you weren’t above trying to take some embarrassing wiggler photos on the way out. But wait! A twist ending!! That wasn’t photo software!!! And suddenly thorny grub legs are skittering up your spine and warm grubs bodies are heavy on your legs and you’re screaming and still bleeding and one of the grubs looks you right in the eyes and the grub is you. 

It was basically the most terrifying ten minutes of your entire life, except for all those times when you thought that you might be brutally murdered by the people you cared for and trusted the most. 

But it wasn’t _hard_. 

This, though. This is hard. Last time you dealt with grubs, time bullshit decreed that were fully qualified for what you needed to do. This time, your docterroral degree in panic and failure studies isn’t relevant at all. These grubs don’t just need to be gathered; they need to be sorted, processed, and re-homed. You’ve spent the last several hours getting cried on by rustbloods. 

Now there’s no putting off the worst of the job. 

You fish a grub out of the freakblood basket and place it on the worktable in front of you. It immediately tries to escape from the side. You scowl, and grab it before it can get too far and hold it up in front of your face. The damn thing’s legs are pinwheeling wildly, trying to get some traction in the open air, and its little face scrunches up to scowl right back at you. 

You look over at Kanaya’s table, which has gone suspiciously silent. “Don’t even think about it,” you say. 

Kanaya rolls her eyes and puts away her camera phone. 

You turn your attention back to the flailing grub, which has escalated its fit to the level of ear-rending squeaking noises. Something so small should not be able to create that many decibels. Whose brilliant idea had it been to ectobiologize genetic material combinations between all possible donor pairings, living or dead, in order to maximize diversity for your resurrected race? Oh, wait, that’s right – it was yours. You are the idiot. You have afflicted yourself with a wiggler who has Vriska Serket’s scream and your volume settings. Centuries from now, your descendants will revere you as the God of Stupidity, and celebrate your blessings by masturbating in public while drooling. 

Poor grub. 

When you look at it closer, you see that it also has your nose. 

“Hey, shush,” you mutter, and sort of… poke it in the cheek with your free hand. This isn’t cheating, it’s a fucking grub. “It’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

The grub bites your finger hard enough to dent skin. 

“You pus-licking little—“

A flash of light nips your rant in the bud. 

“ _Kanaya,_ ” you groan. 

Kanaya snaps a second picture, and waves. 

“Karkat.”

“Don’t you have grubs to tag and bag?” 

“I have finished with the long ramhorn grubs. Jade is fetching the first basket of short ramhorn grubs,” Kanaya purses her hips. “Don’t tell Aradia but I have nearly had my fill of ram horned trolls for this perigee. Several of them have made attempts to charge my fatty glandular chest padding.” 

“Isn’t that what fatty glandular chest padding is for? At least you didn’t get the biters.” As if on cue, the grub in your hand stops biting your finger, and starts making a tittering noise. “Oh, what now.”

“I suspect that it’s amused by your face.”

You furrow your brow. The grub titters harder. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that grubs are simple creatures with underdeveloped tastes,” Kanaya teases you, and walks over to stand by your station. “What are you going to do for symbols? They can’t all keep yours.” 

You pick up your chipgun, press it to the grub’s side, and shoot the tracking microchip into its chitin. Sollux has set up a network up so that you can remote-monitor all of the grubs while they fatten up for pupation. Back on Alternia, no one would have cared if a few wigglers died and made more food for the others, but you had all decided that this wasn’t going to be like back on Alternia. 

Here, grubs weren’t going to be killed for paints or burned to fuel the heaters in the Mother Grub’s lair. They won’t have to earn their sign. 

“I didn’t think about it,” you admit. “The genes for my blood color are ludicrously recessive. If blood were an imperial battlefield, my shitty red would be the guys hiding behind the space station to loot the bodies when the fighting is done, only their ship is a stolen piece of shit and it’s hunted down by an legislacerative task force for bringing shame upon the throne.”

“What?”

“Shut up, it makes perfect sense if you understand my Aspect.“ Sort of. “The point is that this wasn’t supposed to happen. There should be maybe one freak born five generations from now, not enough to fill a laundry basket on the first try. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Jade, but I think we fucked up the slurry.”

Kanaya shakes her head, and guilt stabs you right in the bloodpusher. You honestly aren’t trying to ruin Kanaya’s moment of triumph. That is not what this is about.

“I don’t think anything went wrong with the slurry,” she says, before you can gather enough wits apologize. “Hold it still on the table, would you?” 

You do as Kanaya asks. The grub starts wailing again, but there’s not much it can do when Kanaya steals your permanent marker and draws a design on its back. It looks a lot like Vriska’s sign, with Scorpio’s stinging tail replaced by a soft crescent moon. 

Kanaya picks the grub up and sets it – _him_ , now – in the ‘done’ basket, where he can wail himself to sleep amongst the soft towels. Then she notes down which sign and hemocaste should be associated with the grub’s new chip.

“I think you know what to do.” Kanaya smiles. “Don’t let them be signless.” 

Your ruthlessness node must be on a short, undeserved vacation, because you cannot bring yourself to contradict her. 

~~~

 

You get up to make some coffee, check the cameras, splash water on your face like the men in human movies do when they are trying to refresh themselves. You do not feel refreshed. You feel like there is water dripping in your eyes and you wish that you could go have a real shower. 

You do not go have a shower. You know exactly what Jade would do to bring you back, and you don’t need to add Jade and Kanaya laughing at your obnoxious neon genitals to the rest of the nightmare rotation. 

When you can stall no longer, you head back to your workstation and pluck the smallest, quietest grub from its corner of the basket. It makes a churring sound coils itself around your arm, nuzzling the crown of its head against your wrist. Were grubs supposed to get cold? It’s probably cold. 

Unfortunately for you, the grub's going to have to have to get colder. You never dreamt you’d think this, but god damn are you tired of feeling the tears of wigglers run through your merciless fingers. 

You fasten your free hand around its butt and try to sort of… unwind it. The thing’s got a grip like nakodile jaws, though, and all you accomplish is to make it snuggle harder, pressing its snuffly little nose against your pulse point. You then try to pry one of its back legs off. That’s about exactly as useful as your first try. 

“Come on,” you say. This is starting to get uncomfortable. Breath tickles against your palm, and what the fuck does this freak think its doing, being all warm and alive and real on top of you. 

You sort of… wave your arm back and forth. Nothing doing. 

Finally you just give up, and unholster the microchip gun. It should be fine to do it this way if the grub will stay still, and frankly you don’t have all day to sit around playing cuddlebuddies. You are a busy and dignified troll with lots of other things to do, like codifying a database of important movies to pass on vital cultural know-how for these future generations. 

You shoot a microchip into the grub’s side. It lets up a little, finally, and raises its head and anterior thorax up to look at you. Tears well in its wide, milky eyes, and it looks at you like you culled its favourite fiduspawn. 

You put the gun down to pat the grub on the head. It sports no less than four miniscule nub horns, and now you know how it came to be such an over-dramatic, sensitive little cry-wiggler. 

“I have got to stop projecting this shit on your sorry carcasses,” you tell it, in the most soothing, shooshy voice you can muster. “All of you came from all of us. You’d think I’d learn to put too much stock in judging trolls on their racks.” 

The grub blinks at you, and tried to headbutt your fingers. You guess that’s an improvement. 

“Now you need a sign.”

Ugh, right, the signs. You'd successfully avoided thinking about the signs for a good half-hour, but now carnivorous butterfly lusii are threatening to gnaw their way out of your gullet. A sign is supposed to mean something. You can’t stick your thumb up your waste chute and just make one up because you think it would look cool. There were laws about that in your old world, and for good reason, because the shape of your own self is a serious thing. 

“I could give you a symmetrical sign. I bet you’d like that.” That’s not projecting, you tell yourself – it’s good sense, everyone likes a nice mirrored sign. 

The grub sticks its tongue out.

“I know a guy like you who cares a lot about that kind of thing.” You pause. “Shit. What if giving you a symmetrical sign gives you a complex. What if you spend the rest of your life doing things in fours like a retard because oh look, the idiotblood fucked up his idiot legacy, and then you get killed for having four matesprites at once like the protagonist from Troll Big Love.”

The grub tries to lick its own nose. 

“That’s it. No symmetrical sign.”

You uncap your marker and draw a shaky line on the grub’s side. It hides its face in your arm again. You hope that doesn’t mean anything. Your line was supposed to be slightly uneven, it’s artistic license, this grub doesn’t know anything about drawing. 

You make the line into a half-circle looking sort of thing. There, see, the shake was on purpose and now it looks fine. 

“But what if not giving you a symmetrical sign makes the complex worse? What if you spend your whole life hating your sign and you fold it in half all the time so everyone always asks you what the ugly grey—“ 

No, red, you realize. 

_Red_.

You swallow.

“—what that ugly _red_ print is, and you flip the fuck out and start cutting people into quarters. What then.”

The grub has no answer for you. Its feet shift against the fabric of your lab coat. 

“Okay, symmetrical sign,” you resolve. You go to make a second half-circle, and then try to link the two with a double line. Only the second half-circle is smaller than the first, and fatter, and the double lines have not turned out exactly parallel.

The grub is more relaxed now; you pull her off your arm easily. 

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I am so fucking sorry. So I’d appreciate it if you could maybe try not to be complete shit. I know you’ve got a lot to overcome on that account but I think you’re doing okay so far.”

You can’t bear to look her in the eyes and longer, so you set her down with her clutchmate in the finished pile.

The rest of the evening, morning, and following afternoon pass uneventfully. You finish up the redbloods and then help Kanaya and Jade look up rustblood signs until all of the grubs have been carted off to the wiggler caverns, and the three of you are dead on your feet. 

You probably won’t sleep again for at least a week or three, at this rate, so you send Jade and Kanaya home, and settle in to keep watch over the grubs. It’s almost surreal to hear the faint whirr of the computer fans again, after hours of wailing, chirping, and crawling, and you allow the sound to lull you into a rare sense of calm. 

Those grubs. Those fucking cancerblood wigglers. It occurs to you for the first time that maybe, just maybe, they might never feel bad looking in the mirror. That maybe you _didn’t_ drive this rail-based freight transportation vehicle into Grand Fuck-Up Station. Everything could, in fact, be completely fine right now. 

You boot up a game of Troll Civilization (Destroyer Edition) and settle in for a long night. 

Four hours into your game, one of the microchip alerts blinks on.


	2. Chapter 2

Sollux’s tracking application is about as obnoxious as the nookmuncher who programmed it. It projects a map of the wiggler storage caverns, with each grub represented by an individual dot of hemocaste-colored light. Admin warnings are triggered if a grub’s heart rate or body temperature venture too far outside of the real-time caste average. It’s an insufferably brilliant system. It would be even more brilliant if the admin warning didn’t take the form of a seizure-inducing animated grub-skull gif. 

That tool spends way too much time with Aradia. 

You dismiss your game of Troll Civilization without saving – the best ending, the one where the Condesce personally culls your upstart tribe, can’t be achieved on oliveblood anyway – and check the coordinates. A redblood at the back of cavern F-3. Of fucking course.

The twist in your stomach is probably vindication. You were right to think that something was wrong. You told Kanaya so. Oh yes, won’t it be fun to let her know that in person, and watch her expression crumble in the face of your superior slurry-related wisdom. You cannot wait to reveal this amazing scientific triumph.

You open up trollian. 

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA]

CG: KANAYA

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] is idle

CG: KANAYA, WAKE UP.  
CG: KANAYA LISTEN  
CG: I  
CG: NEVER MIND.  
CG: I’VE GOT THIS.  
CG: MAKE SURE YOU SLEEP IN, OKAY? OUR CONTROL ROOM IS COVERED IN A VISCOUS FILM OF INFANT SNOT LEAVINGS, AND WHO THE FUCK KNOWS WHAT”S IN THAT. I’M NOT GOING TO BE THE SORRY ASSHOLE LEFT HOLDING THE BAG IF YOU AND JADE CAN STILL GET SICK FOR SOME REASON.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA]

You hover your cursor over Jade’s chumhandle, but think better of opening a window. That woman is a lost cause. She’ll sleep through anything short of a dog whistle or the next meteor apocalypse, and last time you used the dog whistle you ended up stranded on the other side of the planet for nine hours, exploring new and exiting frontiers in the art of groveling. 

You’re on your own. 

You set the tracking application to send any further alerts to your phone, rather than the main console. Then you grab a canvas bag and load it up with whatever random crap you can find that might be useful: tube-shaped portable lighting device, two-bladed handled cutting apparatus, jar of live mealworms, slightly tear-stained towel. No way are you fumbling around in the dark with sylladex bullshit when there’s a grub in there whose life you’ve probably ruined on account of you are the reason it is alive. You are promoting yourself from bulge-fondling comic relief assistant to real-life scienterrorist adventure FLARPer. 

You stand at the mouth of the wriggler caverns, your chest bare and your horns majestic. Your lab coat flares out behind you like a cavalreaper’s battle standard. You think that you should send Jade a message after all. 

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began texting gardenGnostic [GG]

CG: IF I EVER START WEARING FAKE CLAWS AND REFERRING TO MYSELF AS THE INCREDIBLE SHRIEKING MEDICINE CRAB, YOU HAVE FULL PERMISSION TO SHOOT ME IN THE FACE.

gardenGnostic [GG] is idle

CG: I’M SERIOUS. THIS IS AN OFFICIAL LEGAL FUCK-OFF-TEREZI WAIVER.  
CG: THE DESSICATED REMAINS OF MY DIGNITY ARE IN YOUR HANDS, JADE.  
CG: TRY TO MAKE IT A CLEAN HIT. PICK A TIME WHEN I’M NOT TRYING TO HUMP A STUFFED BLUBBERBEAST AND PUT YOUR CROSSHAIRS RIGHT ON MY PANSHIELD.  
CG: I’M COUNTING ON YOU.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased texting gardenGnostic [GG]

With that settled, you take off into the caves at a jog. 

~~~

Your jogging lasts for all of fifteen seconds, and you could probably find a dirty joke in that, but at this point you give so few fucks that they might as well lovingly stitch your nook shut and declare you a re-pupated virgin. 

There’s no light here, not a single crack in the walls, and you can hear the soft shurrush of little grub bodies meandering around you. It’s fucking creepy. More importantly, it’s fucking dangerous. If you keep trotting along like a drone in a silica-based tableware repository you’re going to step on someone and then where will you be? You will be standing around with grub-intestines on your shoes, having beaten out some fairly fierce competition for title of most pathetic murderer on this planet.

You try sort of… shuffling forward, like a zombie, but that’s too slow and it’s not getting you very far, so you decide to go to Plan C. You settle into a rhythm of turning on Sollux’s tracking app, navigating forward by the faint light of your phone screen, and then turning it off before a tide of grubs gets pulled by the pretty shiny. Step step step, light turn, flail, nearly trip on a stalagmite, step step step you really hope that wet stuff wasn’t grubshit, step turn you’re nearly two thirds there, holy fuck what is that sound.

Your phone. The tracking app is buzzing, and by ‘buzzing’ you mean that an alert ringtone has gone off to the tune of the narrator from Troll Soul Caliber telling you that the game is over, you have lost. You would give Sollux apocalyptic beatdown about his terrible dead-grub humor if there weren’t a rustblood having some kind of issue on the other side of the cave system, fuck your life, and if the noise hadn’t drawn the attention of every grub within one hundred meters, fuck your life with a rusty sword hilt until your waste chute prolapses and your friends mercy-cull you for incontinence. 

A chirping, burbling, baby-soft tide gathers to take a rush at you. You frantically pull the jar of mealworms out of your bag, wrench the top off, and fling the contents in the general direction of the horde. Then you turn on the tube-shaped portable lighting device and make a break for it while the crowd masses to feed. 

You find your first target near a pool of liquid by a row of stalactites. The four-nubbed grub that might have been cold is, apparently, definitely cold. She is curled up in a sad little ball with her legs clutched to her belly. The redblood that Kanaya marked up is there too, poking insistently at her side with one blunt antler. 

You move to take a closer look. Shouty forkhorns crawls on top of his clutchmate and tries to brandish his horns at you, shriek-chirping all the while, and fuck if you have time to dislodge the stubborn little shit. You scoop the both of them up, stuff them in your bag, and try not to think about how the trials would have definitely put a stop to anything as annoying as this perpetual noise machine.

Something pulls on the back of your coat. It’s a third grub, a rustblood with crazy serrated snaggletooth ramhorns, and she’s gnawing on your clothing because you probably dropped a few of those mealworms on it like a professional fuck-up. More grubs are inching forward to investigate. You still don’t have time to dislodge a stubborn infant. You heft the rustblood (and the corner of your coat) into the crook of your arm and take off for alert number two.

As you run, the tracker starts ringing again. 

~~~  
A few lifetimes later, you blunder your way back from your very last trip into the caverns. Your knuckles are scraped, you’ve got drool in your hair, and your back is all fucked-up from stooping. You feel like you just fought ten rounds of televised strife entertainment with a semi-detached supply conveyance vehicle. 

You find Jade perched at the main computer console, pretty as you please, all decked out in clean clothes and fresh lip gloss. She is fourteen turns into annihilating your Troll Civilization points record. 

“Harley.”

“Jeeze.” She turns away from her game to look you over. “I was starting to think you stepped out the grubs for a coffee break.”

You set your bag down on your worktable. The contents squirm, but do not protest. Your bundle of genetic deviants has decided to take a nap now that there is no chance of their being entertained by your imminent death. 

“Kanaya says coffee will only make my insomnia worse.” You stumble over to the coffee machine. “Then she rolls her eyes and sighs a lot. She’s so lost without a club to her name that I think she’s decided to auspistice between me and my bad decisions.” 

“Mmm-hmm?”

The coffee is stone cold stale. You pour some into your crusty used mug instead of drinking from the pot, because at least one guy has to set some fucking standards around here.

You tip your head back and chug. Oh, fuck this coffee is disgustingly good. This coffee is ambrosial drippings from the Mother Grub’s nourishment sores. 

“It’s a fucking scandal. She needs to understand that me and bad decisions are committed platonic life partnership.” You set your empty mug down, and wipe your maw with the back of your hand. 

Jade makes a bluh face, as though you are not a shining gentleman knight compared to the swill-dwelling filth fetishists that are your mutual male acquaintances. 

“What happened to my coat?” 

“Grubs happened to your coat.” You walk over to her, to show her the edges of your coatsleeve, died red and rust with fresh snot. 

“Seriously?” She wrinkles her nose and tugs at the edge of a hem, frayed from grub teeth. Her face melts into the human expression known as ‘bemusement’. “Karkat, were you mugged by babies.”

“You saw what happened with Kanaya. They’ll react as a group to light, noise, or food. And just when you think you’ve gotten away from the little shitmaggots, they start dropping down on you from above.” You point to your chest, where several long scratches are not-quite-bleeding. “You see these? I got these from catching brats horn-first. I am now the manliest person you know.”

“Oh swooooooon,” Jade says. 

“The good news is, I have heroically saved all of our precious little balls of mucus from stubbed legs, bumped heads, and scary encounters with cave centipedes.“ You lean over Jade to type a few commands on the main computer console, returning the tracker alerts to their rightful home. “I had to use up all our mealworms to keep them off me, so they’re full and drowsy now. They shouldn’t give you much trouble.”

“But the bad news is that Kanaya shouldn’t go in there alone,” Jade finishes your thought.

“I’m going to need to make a schedule,” you say.

“Uugh.” 

“No – no, hear me out. This time it’ll be great.”

“Uuuuuuugh.” Jade executes a flawless facepalm combo. “We all see each other every day, Karkat. We can be on call and work it out as we go along. We don’t need one of your schedules.”

“What the hell kind of attitude is that? I am so pleased to be surrounded by consummate professionals here. Yet, let’s start a brand new society with no schedules where everyone does whatever the hell they want depending on how itchy their nook feels in the morning. Please use this brood for your enlightened social experiment, oh great goddess.”

“Still not hearing a good argument for a stupid schedule!”

“For fuck’s sake, what is the problem. You said you were happy to help us. I have the log, you used one of those idiotic bucktooth smilies.”

“One, I can teleport anywhere I need to be whenever I’m needed. And two, maybe my reasons are none of your business??” 

You’re up in each other’s faces, just like usual, and holy shit, does it ever feel good to get your bicker on after the day you’ve had.

Obviously fate has to shit all over that. The moment is derailed by the high, thin cry of an unhappy grub, and all of the brilliant insults you were about to come up with die screaming in the wreckage.

Jade is staring at you. Then, she’s staring at the bag, which has started moving. Forkhorns bursts onto the scene with a mighty roar, with the sawn-horned rustblood following placidly behind him. 

You sigh. “Great. We woke them up.”

“You mean you woke them up by being a jerk,” Jade corrects you. “Karkat, what are these grubs doing out of their cave?”

You walk back to your workstation and fish the first, final grub out of her burlap nest. She doesn’t look very happy to have been deprived of her cuddle-partners, so you settle her back on your arm, like before. You know, just to keep her from shouting too. Because that is definitely a thing that could happen. 

“This runt is sluggish. She has some kind of problem with low body temperature. It’s not getting worse, but it’s not getting better. I kept her with me while I was working.”

“And those two?” Jade joins you by the desk. You wish she wouldn’t switch so casually from annoyed to concerned. Predictable, unflappably bitchy Jade is much better for your nerves. 

“The grubs like swarming, so they can threaten me with the kind of tacky, ironic death that Dave Strider fantasizes about while fondling his collection of exotic genital lesions. And I just—“ You think about the crush of bodies in those caves. About the hive you dared not step out of until the entire fucking planet changed around it. “I don’t actually know shit about raising grubs, but I don’t think it’s good for them to be alone.” 

Forkhorns and Shredhead busy themselves with mapping the edge of the table. Jade looks down on them appraisingly. 

“Maybe you’re right,” she says. “I’ll keep these two from falling off any ledges. Go do your Bloody thing, and see if you can figure out what’s wrong.”

You scowl, and trace the Runt’s stupid blunt horns with the tip of your finger. She chirps and tosses her head.

“The worst part is, I think I might already know.”  
~~~

 

“Open up, bulgebreath!” 

You bang your fist against the door, and immediately regret it; the force of the blow travels past your knuckles to jam painfully at the base of your wrist. 

Fucking Sollux and the fucking two-ton slab of granite parked right in front of the entrance to his hive tower. Who needed so much privacy that they created a gate that only psychics could open? How rude could one shit-encrusted ass pustule be? When you nuked Alternia you should have captcha’d fewer shitty game grubs, and made room in your sylladex to preserve a copy of the Debutaunter’s Guide to Society Etiquette and Slow-Acting Poisons. Fuck knows you could have done without Eridan’s dating sims which you definitely never played.

“Don’t even think about ignoring me!” You yell. “You just got that tracker system running, so I know you’ve stayed in to get your smug all over trollian. You’re up there, wired on pollen, leading your mainframe apiary in a fucking pom-pom cheerlasher waggle dance. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t need a GPS microchip in order to have your number, idiot.”

Unless you don’t really have his number because the number is printed in cutesy rounded Earth numerals and you’ve mistaken a ten for a two. It’s possible. Even likely. You are precisely that much of a fuck up, and anyway, things are a little weird with you and Sollux these days. 

Turns out that it isn’t so easy to pick up where you left off after your best friend up and dies for you. Turns out it’s even harder to pick up where you left off when that best friend uses his new lease on life to leave you behind. 

“You think I’m going to tire out and go away? Hah! I was born more tired that you can possibly imagine. Tired is my rocket fuel.” You shake your fist at Sollux’s second-floor windows. “I bear a message from the voices of the imminently pissed off. They say: knock it the hell off, this is important!” 

You look around for some rocks to throw but, nope, you’re stuck with white sand and wide ocean. 

Time for shit to get real. 

You unbuckle the cover on your messenger bag, grab onto Forkhorns. He’s been chirping his head off within the muffled confines of your canvas bag. Now you hope he will use his powers of annoyance for good.

“Churrrskebu,” Forkhorns burbles.  
“You want to help me out, kid?”

“Chchchchskuuu.”

You hold Forkhorns over your head.

“Sollux!” You shout.

“Skreeee-click-click-buhbuhbuuuuuuuuuh!!” Forkhorns shrieks enthusiastically along with you. 

You have a solid grip on the smooth, almost plastic surface of his exoskeleton, but that doesn’t stop him from wriggling back and forth, tapping his little feet together. He must think he’s done a good job at your game. 

“Crrrrreask-skbuuuuuh!” Forkhorns shrieks again, and gives you this funny, shy sidelong glance, like he’s almost expecting something. 

He probably thinks you still have mealworms. You hastily shove him back into the bag before he gets any bright ideas about going hunting and getting himself culled for birdfood. Cloth rustles as the other two grubs clamor on top of him. You tune out their trio of outraged chirps. 

You need to invest some grist in earplugs. 

“We can keep this up all night!” You press on, but still no answer. “Sollux??” 

Fuck it, maybe the moron is wearing headphones. 

You’d been hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it looks as though you don’t have any choice. You are on a righteous mission. You buckle your bag back up, as tightly as you dare, and shrug off Jade’s lab coat. Then you look around to see if anyone’s watching. You feel short of breath for a moment, when you think that you can feel eyes on you, but no, you’ve only imagined it. 

There are fourteen people who matter in this universe, and the ones who aren’t you all have better things to do than loiter around Sollux Captor’s stupid tower. It’s just the moon, the tide, and you making a colossal idiot of yourself. 

You walk around the tower until you see an open window. After that, all you have to do is let go of the weight never carry, and flex a set of muscles that isn’t there. The wings burst out like arterial blood, like sails unfurled for hurricane weather, each measuring longer than your armspan. They’re hideous enough that Terezi could hack them off and wear them for a cape. 

You jump up and down a few times, like a tool, until something in your hindbrain stirs and the wings start beating, one two one two. Steering is not your strong suit, since haven’t used the fucking things since you got here, but even you are able to bumble your way towards the open window. 

Eventually.

Look, you’re by the ocean, there are breezes and shit, okay? At least you haven’t broken your nose again. Your mug doesn’t need any help being ugly. 

You wrench your wings back in as soon as your feet touch down on the windowsill – thank God it’s over, those things are disgusting – and set off in search of wherever Sollux has set up his nerd hovel. It doesn’t take a genius sleuth to track him down. You just have to follow the sound of wheezy man-giggling until you reach a cozy block on the top floor. 

The door is open. 

“Hey,” you say, because it’s not like there are any chests here to hide behind. 

Sollux stares up at you from a nest of obsolete programming books and gutted couch cushions. Behind him is a large monitor running a video chat program. Aradia waves at you from the within the screen. 

Sollux is wearing hideous yellow and black tartan pyjamas. 

Aradia is sitting in a tent, and has curlers in her hair. 

No one says anything. 

Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. All of your shits are running together in a torrent of pants-crapping embarrassment. You are probably blushing. 

“Uh, am I… interrupting something?”

“Oh my god. Seriously, Karkat?!” Sollux throws his hands up, and the light of his power catches on his blue and red nails. He hasn’t painted one of his thumbs, yet. There’s an open polish bottle on the floor. “You have twenty seconds.” 

You honestly do feel bad for walking in on them. You know all too well how it is, with a long-distance pale moirallegiance. But you choke down the reflexive urge to apologize, because your bag is warm against your side, and you can feel tiny horns squirm against your hipbone.

“Aradia, I’m sorry, but I need you to stop being weird at Sollux for like five minutes,” you say. “This douchebag got his Doom in our slurry.”  
~~~

Apparently, Aradia _can’t_ stop being weird at Sollux for five minutes, and even if she could, your classy as fuck break-and-enter routine has not won you any allies here. Another stunning victory for you and your legendary arsenal of social skills!! Who can say what amazing feat you will accomplish next. Perhaps you will up your game from hive invasion to sniffing Sollux’s sopor while he’s not in his respiteblock. That is probably how all of the cool people win friends. 

Not that you’re here to make friends. Or be friends. If you’re still friends. You have business to discuss. 

Sollux shoos you away from his pile of junk, all the way down to the second level. You generously allow him to arrange both you and Aradia’s monitor around his nutritionblock counter. 

“One more thing,” Sollux says, ducking out of the room.

“Are you getting your headache pills?” Aradia calls after him. 

“I’ll save them for after I’m done having to listen to Karkat.”

You hear a crash, a muffled curse, and what sounds like the faint pop-fizzle of psionic energy. When Sollux returns, he has thrown a giant fluffy terry-cloth dressing gown over his retina-searing pee-jays. 

“Here,” Sollux says. 

He throws an object at you, which you catch without thinking. Lucky for you it’s an ugly red tee shirt and not, say, one of his stupid throwing stars. 

You realize that he’s not looking you in the face. 

You set your bag on the counter, and pull the tee shirt on. 

“I know that there’s not enough fossil-based combustion liquid in this star system to construct a rocket that would budge your ego, but please, try to get over yourself. I did not invite myself over to randomly hit on you for no reason.” 

“You barged into my house with no shirt on and started rambling about slurry. What am I supposed to think?” 

This is the part where Past Sollux would have gone ‘eheheheh’ like a wiggler staring at his first titty website, and you both would have made huge asses of yourselves with bad innuendo, and then you would have still been friends. But this Sollux doesn’t go ‘eheheheheh’. The ghost of Past Sollux is obnoxiously calm about fucking with you. 

He’s looking at you, like he expects something, but you don’t know what cue he’s trying to send you, and even you can’t stoke a nice relaxing rage with such tepid shit for fuel. 

“You’re supposed to think that the words ‘doom’ and ‘slurry’ in one sentence are an apocalyptic grammatical construction, and that it might be a good idea to the guy who knows what he’s talking about.”

You hear a static-y crunch. Aradia is watching you both while eating roasted crickets from a plastic container. You turn your bag a bit. The last thing you need is her seeing the blotch of grub drool soaking through the canvas, and asking annoying questions. 

“I couldn’t follow that sentence at all, but I think you should listen to him!” Aradia says. “If he were hitting on you, he would probably have combed his hair.” 

“True.” 

“ _Thank you_ , Aradia.” You want to get out of this awkward situation as soon as possible. “Kanaya probably told you; the first cohort of grubs hatched a couple of days ago. It was mostly rustbloods.”

“What do you mean by mostly?” Sollux asks. 

“I mean there were some freakbloods. Grubs like-“ Suck it up, Vantas. There isn’t really anything caught in your throat. “Like me.” 

“You told everyone that wasn’t going to happen.”

“It wasn’t! My blood is the shittiest of all recessive codes in the genetic sewer that is our collective splooge. All of the normal input was supposed to be strong enough to drown it out.” You shudder. “But I wasn’t being objective. I can admit that now. I forgot that not all of the other input was normal. If you cross a freak with freak you get some more freak, big fucking surprise.”

Sollux blinks his stupid blank ghost eyes. Aradia continues to eat her crickets. 

“The other freak is you, moron!”

“Does anyone hear squeaks? And funny tearing noises?” Aradia says. 

“No, no one hears that,” you say. 

“This is not cool.” Sollux leans forward over the counter. “You’re the one who decided to use you in the slurry. Sorry, but it’s not my problem if you’ve gotten cold feet now that it’s too late.”

“Not your problem?” You snap. You are aware that you are gesturing like your Dad used too, all flailing arms. You could not care less. “Maybe our shiftless friends would rather be off exploring new places so that they can brag about being the first sentient beings to spew sexual fluids on them, but these grubs are all of our fucking problem!”

“That’s not actually why we’re out here.” Aradia chimes in. Too bad you ignore her. 

“I built the tracker for you and Kanaya, didn’t I?”

“And???”

Sollux massages his temple. “KK, what is it you _want_?” 

You want—

You just—

Okay, so mostly you wanted to yell at Sollux for fucking everything up. But wait! Solliux is right. This is in fact entirely your fault for daring to expose the Mother Grub to your disease-ridden sludgeblood, and you screwed up your chance to do some quality venting time by tromping in where you weren't wanted. Well played.

Before you can stop gawping and say something productive, those tearing noises Aradia mentioned turn into a full-blown ripping sound. You should have paid more attention to that grub drool. Shredhead has gnawed through the seams on the cloth, creating and opening for all three grubs spill out onto the table. 

“Aaaaah!” The brave Hero of Doom leaps back from the table. 

Shredhead makes a beeline for the monitor, attracted by the crunchy chewing sound of Aradia’s snacking. She rears up and paws at the glass with her forelegs to try and root out some yummy crickets of her own. 

“Oh my,” Aradia breathes.

Forkhorns rides herd on the Runt, trying to push her forward towards the screen as well. But she’s taking her time. She doesn’t like moving, if it means she can’t be touching anyone. 

“Why would you bring those here?” Sollux pales. It might be the most expression you’ve seen on his face for sweeps. You are glad that you are too tough to fall victim to the instinctive fear of grubs.

You let the Runt crawl into your palm. Forkhorns hisses at you, for the sake of appearances, and then scurries off to join his other friend. 

“There’s something wrong with her,” you say, and hold the Runt out to him. You are a vindictive sack of bile. “You cross a freak with a freak, you get a freak.” 

Sollux shrinks back. 

“You said you’d make it so we didn’t have to cull any of them. Were you wrong about that too?” 

“Is it going to die?” Aradia adds, like she’s asking about the weather. 

“No, she is not going to die!” You explode. You can't say why. The words tear their way out of you, the way Gamzee is always describes it in his terrible raps, and for the moment you are glad he’s not here, because this 'wicked groove' is working for you, this is fan-motherfuckin-tastic.

“None of them are going to die! No one is getting culled! You, Sollux, are going to get off your apathetic ghost hermit ass, exercise your atrophied legs, and come work with me and Jade to fix this, or so help me I will re-declare myself leader solely to ban you straight back to the fucking ancestor universe!”

You watch Sollux swallow.

After a moment, he nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my defense, I posted the bit about "Shouty Forkhorns" the day _before_ that Meenah update came down. Seriously, you can check the date stamp on the kinkmeme. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's read and commented/kudos'd so far! I've been really overwhelmed by the response to this silly fic.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time you finish fucking around at Sollux’s place, your jeans are torn, you’ve stubbed a horn, and your hair is full of enough transmitter pollen to qualify as a certified computational waste dump. You should have known that your outburst would scare the grubs. But no. No, you had no interest in rational thought; you were too busy stimulating your triumph centers like a small child discovering his own shame globes. Before you knew it, the Runt had scrambled out of your big stupid palm, and all three grubs were making a break for it. 

Thus began your sidequest to go junk spelunking in the grimy crevasses of Sollux’s hive. You don’t know why someone so concerned with apiary hygiene would fail to clean the horde of crap that Aradia stashes in his lower blocks, and frankly, you don’t give a shit. You’re just happy that you caught up with the wigglers before they died of dust asphyxiation. 

Sollux, predictably, was too busy being freaked out to be any use at all. 

You meet up with him in his atrium, and are unsurprised to find him tapping on his phone and looking bored. At least he’s changed into something less likely to cause seizures in infants. 

“If you’re done playing with your wigglers,” Sollux says, “could we maybe get out of here before they start eating my computers?”

Fuck. You don’t want to think about what could have happened if one of the grubs mistook a mainframe for a delicious candy treat. The three of them are draped across your forearm; you squeeze them a little bit tighter against your chest. It’s lucky for you that they’re all too tired right now to give you any shit. 

“It wasn’t playing anything,” you say. “Haven’t you heard? We are living in a game-free paradigm. We have grasped our ultimate reward. Every day we spend here presents opportunities to have magical new experiences. I know this because I have now been evaded by creatures whose sole tactical skills involve being red and crying.”

“Didn’t that happen to you on LoTaF?”

“Hey, those imps never cried. They were stone-cold killers.” 

Sollux makes a dumb wheezy snorting noise. Not for the first time, you wonder why any female in paradox space has ever consented to touch his face. 

“I don’t know,” Sollux says. “Sounds like old times to me.”

“You mean the times when I did all the work, while you sat around making unhelpful comments about terrible shit that hasn’t even happened yet?” 

“You mean the times when I did all of the heavy lifting, because you were too busy scuttling around screeching your stupid nubs off?” 

Something intangible shifts in the atmosphere, like the feeling you get when your scar tissue pulls tight, and you lock all the windows in case there is a rainstorm. Sollux gestures at the granite slab that covers his door. The rock rises obligingly into the air. 

You take the hint and walk outside. Forkhorns and Shredhead cuddle against you, tucking their oculars away from the stinging salt air. The Runt makes a squeaking noise when she hears the waves crashing. 

“What’s the deal with that rock anyway?” You watch Sollux follow after you. 

He flicks his wrist, and the stone comes crashing back down in a dramatic cloud of sand. 

“It makes a statement,” Sollux says, like you’re supposed to be impressed. 

God, you’re so sick of this. If Sollux hates being around the rest of you that much, he’s free to move to any fucking beach on the planet. 

“Yeah, I get it,” you snap. 

It’s hard to tell, but you think that you see Sollux deflate a little. It’s probably nothing. Past experience has shown that the list of people who have more social acumen than you includes ghosts, robots, fanboys, legislascerators, and sentient puppets. Odds are that you imagined at least half of the entire conversation that you just had. 

You and Sollux walk down the beach without saying much else. Kanaya’s brooding complex is only a kilometre or so away, tucked conveniently between the sea and the high, sturdy shell of a long inactive volcano. The secured cave entrance looms in the distance, bordered by your and Kanaya’s hives, the walled garden, and Jade’s dwelling spire part-way up the mountain’s slope. 

The Runt is still squalling about something. You lean in as best you can without dropping her sleepy clutchmates, and crane your neck so that your jaw falls near her ear. 

“Shoosh,” you murmur. 

“Crrrkskt.” The Runt bats at your hair.

“Shooshush.” 

She blows a spit bubble that pops against the side of your face. 

When you look up, Sollux is staring again. 

“What.” You straighten your back. 

“… what’s that thing on its side?”

It takes you a second to realize what he’s talking about. 

“That’s her sign, moron.” 

“That’s a sign?”

“Of course it’s a sign.”

Sollux makes a face. “It’s not symmetrical.” 

“Fuck you right back into Bilious Slick’s primordial ectoslime, her sign is one hundred percent-“ Your tirade is aborted by the sound of the Squiddle theme chiming from your hip. “Wait, can you hold these? Jade’s texting me.” 

Sollux blinks uncomprehendingly, as though you have just asked him to perform a traditional Alternian self-evisceration dance for your amusement. Spoiler alert!! No one but a psychopath would be amused by that, it is completely revolting in every respect. 

“You don’t have to touch the wigglers, you giant ambulatory foetus. For fuck’s sake float them around or something.” 

The grubs lift off of you, one by one. You are relieved to see the two healthy ones snooze happily in midair. 

The Runt, on the other hand, takes to flying with a threatening snuffle, and Sollux wastes no time dumping her right back down on top of your head. You reach up with one hand to steady her, while her feet find purchase in your scalp; she moves into a comfortable position to start sucking the pollen out of your hair. 

With that sorted out, you flick on your phone. 

gardenGnostic [GG] began texting carcinoGeneticist [CG]

GG: karkat!!  
GG: karkat the babies are hungry again  
GG: kanaya is here and she wants to know why you used all the mealworms  
GG: i think i should tell her about that grub   
CG: WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO THAT  
GG: because its her grub too??? >_>;;  
CG: I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU WOULD DO THAT  
CG: DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE?  
CG: YOU ARE THE LUSUS WHO WANDERS CARELESSLY ONTO AN AMBULATORY SUPPLY TRANSIT SURFACE AND CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT BECAUSE IT IS PARALYZED BY THE LIGHTS OF A SEGMENTED MOTORIZED SUPPLY MOVEMENT DEVICE.  
CG: SNAP OUT OF IT  
CG: STEP AWAY FROM THE LIGHT  
CG: OR YOU WILL GET NOTHING FROM ME BUT AN “I TOLD YOU SO” WHEN THE TRUCK HITS YOU AND YOU ARE SAVOURING THE TASTE OF YOUR OWN ORGAN FLUIDS LIKE A FORM OF REVOLTING MAMMALIAN CUD.  
GG: ugh fine  
GG: i can understand if you want to say something in person, but you had better not wimp out and keep it from her, mister!!!!!!   
CG: I’M SORRY, DID I SEE THE WORD ‘WIMP’ ON MY SCREEN?  
CG: YOU HAVE GOT THE WRONG KNIGHT, JADE.  
CG: YOU ARE MISTAKING MY NATURALLY FEARSOME AND IMPRESSIVE AURA OF COMPETENCE WITH THE WAY STRIDER LOCKED HIMSELF IN THE BATHROOM TO CRY LAST TIME LALONDE BLEW HIM OFF TO SPEND TIME ON HER BOOK.   
GG: sorry i have to go  
GG: kanaya really likes her chainsaw 8I

gardenGnostic [GG] ceased texting carcinoGeneticist [CG]

CG: WAIT  
CG: WHAT?

gardenGnostic [GG] is idle

~~~

You open the security gate, and your snot nozzles are immediately assaulted by the stench of raw, ripening meat. It’s a one-two punch of cold marrow and sweet carrion. The air is thick with the promise of rotting flesh.

Naturally, this wakes the two healthy grubs up from their dozing. Even the Runt gets excited. The infants churn their legs and start doing their best impression of maggots about to be let loose in a genuine, honest-to-God, non-metaphorical shithive. 

Sollux snatches up the Runt in the middle of a daring attempt to escape down your spine. His eyes flash, and he uses his psionics to juggle the three wigglers into an unsteady orbit around his head.

“Are you sure these are trolls?” Sollux watches Forkhorns fight a losing battle against empty air with horrified fascination. “You didn’t fuck up and get some game grub in there?” Forkhorns screws his face up into a cherry-cheeked scowl. He bares his teeth, and hisses out his hunger. “Oh god, I felt something wet. I think it got spit on me. Why is this happening.” 

You decide that you didn’t hear that. Successfully breeding a generation of trolls has elevated you to a new tier of enlightenment; your evolved language sponge can no longer process the gummy sound of douchelips smacking together. 

“Jade?” You yell into the empty corridors. “Kanaya? You here?” 

Sollux trots along behind you. “Wait, don’t you want to hug these or something? Isn’t that your thing now? Come on, I could drop one. It could touch me.”

You keep walking down the entrance hall. 

“Guys? Why does it smell like a slaughterhouse in here? Who declared this twelfth perigee’s eve, and why didn’t anyone tell me?” 

Sollux and the look that he is giving you can take their douchery to the nearest self-culling station. It’s not that you _can’t_ shut up, exactly. It’s just that you have never encountered a problem that got any better because you stopped talking. 

“I could have put on my shit-tier pyjamas and played behemoth leaving to go with whatever died in here,” you continue. “Then the wigglers would have had the real rancid carcass experience.”

You round the corner into the control room. One of Sollux’s stupid grub alerts is flashing in the center of the main monitor, while the rest of the screen is splattered with thick, congealing globs of olive-green fluid. Your worktable is dusted with specks of sludgy grey viscera. 

Blood is pooled on the floor.

Splashed across the walls. 

Sprinkled artfully across the ectobiology equipment. 

Ahah. 

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

Haaahwelp.

Here he is.

You’d wondered when you’d meet him again.

Your old friend, shortness of breath!!

You sure did miss feeling like someone fastened a tourniquet around your vascular sacs!!!!! Life was definitely not the same without your bloodpusher beating frantically against the cage of your chest. There are your grubs and there is the blood and you can feel it stick to the soles of your sneakers and you can feel it churning beneath your skin and you can feel it behind the walls of the world. The console is blinking but you can’t push the controls you never push them you never do anything you useless genetic fluke and your grubs are so fragile, each a single capillary, and you know that one day they will all whither and die.

“Karkat?”

Sollux doesn’t touch you, but you can still sense his hand hovering uncertainly near your shoulder. It’s enough to send you flailing at nothing. 

“Karkat, you’re being a spaz.” He clears his throat. 

Your arm nearly clips the Runt in the head. She’s crying and you’re terrible and now Jade has appeared in front of you. Jade grabs your shoulders and holds them steady while you thrash. 

“Karkat. _Karkat._ ” Jade looks you in the eye. She is speaking very slowly. She is the Witch of Space, and when she puts her mind to it, no force in the universe can move her. “Kanaya went hunting for meat for the babies. Then she butchered it in here. I was moving the food into the caverns, but I’m back now, okay?”

“She… the… what??” You croak. 

Coherent sentences are not happening for you right now. 

“We had a talk about how it might not be a good idea for her to babysit alone. Kanaya was really understanding.” Jade grimaces. “Then she went to chainsaw a big mutant kitty, and brought the body back here for some reason.” 

“…okay.” 

You will make time to be concerned about Kanaya later. For now, Jade is steering you into a chair, and you are happy to let her. It will be good to get off your feet for a while. 

You close your eyes. You don’t ever want to see gore on the walls of a laboratory again. It was bad enough the first time, on the meteor, when you’d spent weeks scouring concrete for stray bits of graffiti while Terezi, Kanaya, and Gamzee fucked off to bond with their new pals. The blood of your friends is sunk between the cracks in your palms, dilute with soapy water. 

“Oh, hey Sollux,” Jade says.

“Hi Jade.”

The grubs squawk and scramble. The Runt is still sniffling because you lashed out. That’s twice in one day, now, and you are the sorriest piece of excrement ever to ooze out of an artificial glass womb.

You open your eyes to check on how the Runt is doing. Not much. Just a crack. The Runt’s face is all blotchy and ugly, from what you can make out through your eyelashes. You would feel a lot better if she were screaming her head off. 

“Sooo… funny meeting you here?”

“Yeah.” Sollux rubs the back of his neck. “He’s been flipping out. I mean even before now, like hours ago.”

“I wasn’t flipping out,” you grumble, latching on to the excuse to be pissed off. You’d rather be an asshole than a maudlin piece of shit. 

“He broke into my hive.”

“I can believe it. He’s been like that since the grubs were hatched.”

“Eheh. He’s been like that since _he_ was hatched.”

You’ve lost track of what’s going on in here, but if there’s one thing you do know, it’s that watching your former best friend gossip about you with your current best friend makes your stomach churn. Especially since your former best friend ditched you to be a ghost and your current best friend almost certainly does not think of you as her best friend. There is no movie in all of paradox space that can tell you how to deal with the bulgepunch of a social situation that you have inflicted upon yourself. 

“Why does everyone think that I spend all my time flipping out?” You flop forward to put your chin in your hands. “It’s called being responsible. Sorry you slack-jawed morons are too busy rubbing your fronds together to attempt acting like functional adults.” 

Jade and Sollux turn to look at you, and both of them appear to have something to say to that. Fuck, you can’t deal with this right now. 

“Just hand me the grubs,” you groan.

~~~

Unfortunately for your ego, the grubs are too worked up about snacktime to be consoled by a few half-assed murmurs and pats. As soon as Sollux sets them free they scurry right past you to lap at half-dried smears of blood. 

The sight of their tiny grey tongues polishing the floor makes you slightly nauseous. You know, objectively, that the brooding caverns are full of decaying biomatter and other assorted cave scum. You also know that exposure to pathogens is important for building a grub’s basic immune response, because that’s what it says in the research files that Kanaya stole from Her Insufferable Corruption. But you still don’t like how unsanitary it is, because fuck it, they might as well be licking the bottoms of your sneakers, and you know exactly where those have been. 

“Oh, ewwwww.” It sounds like Jade agrees with you. “I think we can do better than that.” 

Jade makes a funny hand motion, and one of the bits of chainsaw refuse that was stuck to your desk grows into a huge, stringy chunk of meat. 

You walk over to the grubs and manually relocate them from the blood puddle to the flesh pile. That earns you a couple of bites and a lot of screeching, but it’s worth it when they settle in to stuff their faces. You don’t think you’ve seen them happier than they are with their mouths full of muscle and their noses smeared with soft white fat. The Runt works at a slow, steady gnaw, while Shredhead tears into her meal with joyful abandon, and Forkhorns keeps trying to stomp a piece of gristle into submission. 

You, Jade, and Sollux stand there watching them like a trio of pan-fried fleet cadets spaced out in front of a competitive reality television show. Except the drama is limited to Shredhead accidentally poking Forkhorns in the butt, and none of the competitors are being hunted for sport. 

Is that weird? Being glad to just… stay still, and enjoy how unselfconscious the grubs are about being messy, ruddy little pukes? You think it must be, but you don’t know. You have lost all sense of what you might once have considered boring or bizarre, before you found out that you were the punchline to a joke that Skaia told in five dimensions. 

You should hurry up and ask Sollux to pinpoint where the inevitable Doom will come from.

Aaaaaany second now. 

The Runt has gobbets of tendon trailing down her chin. That’s really something considering how nubby her fangs are. 

“Look.” You gesture towards her, in case Jade and Sollux missed it. “Look at that freak of nature. That is some skill there. Sort her to the top of the dipshit pile, she is already doing far better at life than any of the sad allotment of genetic rejects I cranked out of a rusty vat.”

“Oh really,” Sollux says.

“Did I ever tell you about how wiggler you tried to eat my shoes?” You bullshit. “Your fangs got stuck in one of the laces, it was an embarrassment to sentient lifeforms everywhere. They could have put it on an imperial propaganda reel and called it ‘why we have trials: cullbait edition’.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen.” 

“Could you not?” Jade interrupts. She looks a little green around the whiskers. “Do baby pictures, I mean? Maybe I spoke too soon about it being better like this. No offense, but your babies are pretty disgusting when they’re eating.”

You cross your arms. 

“Big words from a species that starts life as a lethal gut parasite,” you say. 

“Humans don’t gestate gut parasites, fuckstick.”

“Hunh? That’s weird.” Sollux sticks his frond in. “I thought you were mammals?”

“They are absolutely mammals,” you confirm. “Harley is a barkbeast too, so she’s like a double mammal.” 

“How does that work?” Sollux asks.

“ _Multiple_ gut parasites,” you tell him. 

“Oh,” Sollux says. It takes him a couple of seconds to digest this information. “Sorry about your gut parasites, Jade. That’s a tough break.”

This is going a lot better than you thought it would when you were panicking like a five sweep-old at his first juvenile dance-based social function. God, no one is more pathetic than ten-minutes-ago you. Present you has the benefit of all those big, important thoughts that take a little time to percolate in the thinkpan. Ten-minutes-ago you is always relying on impressions that travel at the speed of idiocy. 

Now Jade will tell you that you’ve been culturally insensitive, you’ll apologize, and everyone can forget about your embarrassing panic attack. Another decisive tactical victory for Karkat Vantas. 

“I don’t have fucking gut parasites!” 

… or not. 

“Maybe I might not want gut parasites!” She hisses. You can tell from the way that her lips are twisted up that she’d be yelling if it weren’t for the grubs in the room. “Maybe Kanaya’s wrong and breeding stops being a duty if my friends would probably let the next generation of humanity grow up eating chalk!! Maybe you should be more grateful that I’d rather help out around here with babies that aren’t mine!!! Maybe not all of us are on a baby schedule and you should both shut the fuck up because you are being jerks and you don’t know what you are talking about!!!!” 

Holy fuck. 

Jade’s face is flushed, her fists are clenched, and she looks just about ready to deliver some flying kicks to the head. Oh man oh fuck, why is she glaring at you. You said barely anything terrible, comparatively speaking. And Sollux is standing _right there_ ; that’s two whole dreamselves worth of asshat parked on top of a single pointy head. 

Sollux moves to stand behind you. Fucking toolbox. He’s already died like four times. He is the last person on this planet to need a living shield. 

“Okay. What I’m hearing is that you don’t want to talk about human infants.” You raise your hands in a placatory gesture. “That’s a completely sensible and logical reaction. Human infants are disgusting.“

“Fucking signed,” Sollux mumbles. 

“So why don’t we start not talking about human infants and instead go check on that grub alarms you’ve let run for ten minutes without checking.”

Jade heaves a sigh, like the effort of dealing of dealing with you takes more energy than hauling around several populated planets. That’s probably fair. 

“Uuuuuuugh. Stop being obsessive. This overprotective daddy routine is not cute,” she says. “You don’t have to go running after every one of those the instant it comes on. The program is set to react to heart rate, so it keeps going off when grubs chase things or have a fright. For a low-level alert like that it’s okay to wait and see if it goes away in a bit.” 

“What? No.” You immediately start looking around for the butterfly net that you alchemized. “Am I talking to John in disguise? I can’t believe you’d let things slide like this.”

Jade stalks up to you, and gives your neck a long, protracted sniff.

“Oh yeah?” She growls. “Well _I_ think you need a bath, mister dried baby vomit.” 

“Hunh,” Sollux says, like he’s just figured out a difficult piece of code. 

You don’t get to hear the rest of his inane comment, because before you can even think of talking over him, Jade sendificates you right the fuck out of there. 

~~~

If you were Terezi Pyrope, you would have predicted what Jade was about to do, and taken appropriate countermeasures. And if you were John Egbert, you would have reacted instinctively to the change in air pressure by invoking your power of flight. If you were Kanaya Maryam, your speed might have saved you, and if you were Jake English, Jade wouldn’t have fucked with you in the first place. 

You’re stuck being Karkat Vantas, though. So when Jade appearifies you in mid-fucking-air, all you can think to do is shriek, squeeze your eyes shut, and let yourself fall ass-first into the freezing waters below you. 

“Fuck!” 

Impact knocks the wind out of you, and all is cold and pressure. Maybe, you think, this is what it’s like to forget. But can’t forget a damn thing, not a single blight on your disease-ridden conscious, and certainly not the lessons your father taught you. 

You sink until you hit the bottom of the lakebed, and then you rebound up.

“Motherfucker!” You break the surface. “Fuck fuck fuck _fuck_!” 

Screeching was part of Dad’s swim curriculum too. And anyway, wherever the fuck you’ve landed, you like you’ve gone on a spelunking expedition through a horrorterror’s nook, right down to the first frozen layer of hell. 

You tread water for thirty seconds, sight the shoreline, and get to paddling. While you swim, you see some fresh clothing and a fluffy towel materialize on the beach. 

You realize that Jade may be watching you with her annoying spectagoggle tech. 

You make a rude gesture at the sky. Jade doesn’t give any response, but then, she _wouldn’t_ answer you if she were just sitting there, waiting for you to shit yourself. You decide that you may as well do something pre-emptively stupid and spiteful to head her off at the pass. 

You walk yourself up to the beach, strip your gross, grub-stained clothing off, and bare all of your hideous scars to the world. Water drips down the ugly, candy-gloss whorl of cauterized tissue that makes up your left hip and upper thigh. The part of you that’s in denial about how much you’re going to regret this later hopes Jade throws up in her mouth a little. 

Jade should know better than to dare you to humiliate yourself. It is the one sphere where you will always outdo yourself. Even if she isn’t watching, you’ve still gotten the job done by flashing a bunch of fish like a complete tool. 

Fuck, you’re freezing. 

You scuttle over to the towel, pick it up, and dry yourself off. Then you wrap the cloth around your waist and pull your phone out of your sylladex.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began texting gardenGnostic [GG]

CG: JADE  
CG: COME ON JADE  
CG: JADE  
CG: THIS PUNISHMENT IS SO RIDICULOUS THAT YOU MIGHT AS WELL DRESS IT UP IN GREASEPAINT AND SEND IT OFF TO JOIN THE MURDERCIRCUS.  
CG: JUST BRING ME BACK. 

gardenGnostic [GG] has blocked you!

Yeah, you should have seen that coming. 

Your planet is really gorgeous. The plains are covered in silver grass and the stars hang thick in the sky. Skaia knew what it was doing when made you a door to this place. You’ll never want for beauty, here, if you take the time to look for it. You could pull on your clothes and relax for a while.

Too bad scenic views are stupid. 

You open the grubtracker app and watch the statistics tick by. The Runt is still running chilly and slow. 

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began texting twinArmageddons [TA]

CG: HEY, MAN  
CG: PICK UP  
CG: I NEED YOU TO DO ME A SOLID AND TELL JADE TO BRING ME BACK.  
TA: s0rry kk, i don’t have a deathwish  
CG: …  
TA: fuck y0u to0  
CG: WOW, I DIDN’T HAVE TO USE SHOUTPOLES TO PITCH A SARCASM TENT OR ANYTHING.  
CG: YOU REALLY GOT ME THERE, ELIPSIS DIVINER.   
TA: you and jade are pretty g0od friends now, i guess TA: y0u don't need me to interfere  
CG: WHAT PART OF JADE SCREAMING AT ME FOR NO REASON AND THEN ***DUMPING ME INTO A FUCKING LAKE*** DID YOU MISS? IS IGNORING HYSTERICAL TIRADES ONE OF YOUR SPOOKY GHOST GOD POWERS?  
TA: i wish  
CG: FINE, WHATEVER.  
CG: ARE THE GRUBS DONE EATING?  
CG: DID THE FOUR-HORNED FREAK CURL INTO THAT LITTLE BALL AGAIN?  
CG: SHE DOES THAT.  
CG: I BET SHE DID IT, PICK HER UP.  
CG: HAVE YOU PICKED HER UP YET???  
CG: I KNOW YOU’RE STILL THERE BULGEBITER.

twinArmageddons [TA] is idle

You banish the phone back to your sylladex. Do some pacing. Card your hands through your hair. You really don’t want to be stuck out here, but you’re not in the mood to start apologizing either. Fuck Jade for thinking you’re paranoid. It’s not paranoia if cosmic law guarantees that something terrible will happen the second you pause to catch your breath. 

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began texting grimAuxiliatrix [GA]

CG: ARE YOU BUSY, KANAYA?  
GA: I Suppose That Depends  
GA: I Have Grazed The Subclavian Vein Of The Musclebeast I Am Hunting  
GA: And Am Now Attempting To Cut It Off At The Knees Before It Can Flee  
GA: Would You Consider That Busy  
GA: As A Member Of A Fearsome Combat Class  
CG: HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU TYPING AT ME RIGHT NOW?  
GA: They Say That Rainbow Drinkers Live So Long Because They Are Quick Enough To Outrun The Grim Spectre Of Death Herself  
GA: That Is How We Dance Between The Shadows  
CG: OH MY GOD, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WAITING TO SAY THAT.  
CG: DID YOU STEAL IT FROM TROLL DOSTOYEVSKY.   
GA: Its Not Stealing Im Reclaiming My Undead Heritage  
GA: From Highblood Appropriation  
CG: STOP TALKING LIKE ROSE BEFORE I PROJECTILE VOMIT SO HARD THAT IT GIVES BILIOUS SLICK A BLOOD CLOT.  
CG: I HAVE NO DESIRE TO DEAL WITH THE LEVEL OF HORSESHIT YOU TAKE TO YOUR HELLMURDER KNITTING CIRCLE.  
GA: How Would You Know What Goes On At Hellmurder Knitting Circle  
CG: LOOK  
CG: I WAS JUST BACK IN THE CAVERNS AND I CAN TELL YOU THE GRUBS ARE ALL FULL  
CG: IT’S OKAY TO HOME WITHOUT MUSCLEBEAST UDDERGIBBLETS IN YOUR SYLLADEX.   
GA: What If I Want Musclebeast Uddergibblets In My Sylladex  
CG: FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, I’M SORRY ABOUT THE GLOWING THING.  
GA: Its Fine  
GA: I Just  
GA: I Want To Do Right For Once  
CG: ME TOO.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased texting grimAuxiliatrix [GA]

Welp. 

Seems like you’re in the mood for that apology after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, apparently AO3 kicks these stories to the top of the update list, when you save a draft to work on pesterlog coding. I was not expecting that! Sorry if anyone got a false update alarm.
> 
> I was also not expecting this bridge section to be 5k. 
> 
> Can't stop writing babyfic, please send help.


End file.
